Reality check: I think [reality-check] is a meta tag. Should we burn it?

Question

I think the reality-check tag is a meta tag. In The Death of Meta Tags, we see:

The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question. They describe some other aspect of the question, like the author’s skill level, or the author’s motivation for asking it, or generally what “kind” of question it is (poll, how-to, etc.).

It's this last idea that tipped me off to the possibility that we were looking at a meta tag: reality check is a kind of question, but does not describe the content of the question. Now, the article goes on to list two tests for metaness of tags. First:

1. If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are useless by themselves — they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question (in addition to a system tag, .

I'm pretty positive that reality-check fails this test, again, because it doesn't describe the content of the question. A reality check question must have other tags describing the content we are supposed to be reality checking (in addition to a system tag, see Is the Only-Tag Test for meta-tag-ness broken here?).

The second test:

2. If the tag commonly means different things to different people, it’s probably a meta-tag. In a cruel, ironic twist, the meaning of the tag [subjective] itself … is actually subjective. Ditto for [best-practices] and [beginner]. Best practices to whom? Beginner by what criteria? These tags are impossible to define by anything remotely resembling an objective metric. In comparison, the the meaning of tags like [java], [c#], and [javascript] are crystal clear to all but the nuttiest of nutbags.

I'm not sure it fails this particular test. 8 out of the 9 questions asked do seem to use the tag in a manner consistent with its description. Only one question uses it in a "am I understanding this right?" kind of way.

So I'm not sure about test two, but I am pretty darn certain that this tag fails test one. It definitely cannot be the only tag on a question, and it just describes a question type, rather than describing the content the question concerns.

Should we burninate reality-check?

Answer 1

Burn it either way

I don't know whether it should be considered a meta tag, but looking at the questions using it I don't think it's a good tag. They largely fall into two categories:

1. Questions about game rules, motivated by "that doesn't make sense in reality" e.g. How does Crown of Stars interact with Greater Invisibility? reality-check isn't needed here; a question can describe specific ways or reasons for being confused, and answers should try to address the specific problems faced by the asker. The tag doesn't really help with that process.
2. Questions about reality, motivated by game mechanics e.g. Spherical Diamond Phylactery. These questions aren't really about RPGs, and would be better asked somewhere else. These are mostly already closed anyway; the only exception seems like it may have avoided closure mainly because it got a good answer saying "don't look at reality, look at game mechanics".

One additional category is "questions about GURPS" which seems to have "reality check" as a named mechanic/design concept. The tag could be redefined as referring to this specific concept (perhaps renamed to gurps-reality-check so people don't just add it to stuff without reading the definition), however since there are only 2 questions fitting this it might just not be necessary. I am not at all familiar with GURPS, so if someone thinks the "reality check" from that system is a clearly defined thing that warrants a dedicated tag then I'm not opposed.